thanks for tuning into the loser kid pinball podcast i am josh roop with me my co-captain scott larson and it's another beautiful day thanksgiving is upon us i actually had my first thanksgiving meal of uh three that started today so i'm i'm i'm already stuffed with turkey and i'm ready for more turkey the rest of the week you look like you're about 18 weeks pregnant so well Maybe you'll be full term by the end of the third meal. Well, I've been doing calorie counting, and the funny part is I did all my calories after I ate for Thanksgiving meal today. I'm like, well, I ate everything at lunch today. All 2,600 calories. I was a champ. I sent you the fries that I had that were fried in beef tallow for dinner. That's what I had. And then when I'm hungry, I just drink frescas because they're zero calories. I'm like, well, this is what I get for the rest of the day. Or zero Mountain Dew, man, but the caffeine is too late. It's 9 o'clock here. Yeah, we're recording late. You know what? I want to talk about our favorite people in the world. Zach and Nicole, many support us here at Loser Kid Pinball Podcast. They've got some amazing product and even better customer service. Scott, you just recently bought from them. What did you get? Well, actually, I just ordered a Jaws 50. It's from my friend who's moving, and he's moving in. And I said, hey, they have a spot for the Jaws 50. This is the last run. so he's like yeah hook me up so well and they just talked about they're unveiling we've are both of us have already used it but they're unveiling a new uh shipping thing that they're doing i used foo fighters i shipped it back to zach so the way it works is they ship you this this giant pod with like all the shipping blankets all the the everything you'll need to tape everything and you essentially take your new game out so i took out king kong and then i opened up King Kong, put it in place, and then I folded up Foo Fighters and put it back in, put the packing blankets around it. It's literally just a big wooden box. The door opens up, sides come off, you put the sides back on, you slap the door back on. I found it was amazing. How about you, Scott? I thought it was great. I actually, I ultimately never, never decided to use one of my games. And so I shipped it back and I, uh, I use that credit toward buying my Merlin edition of Medieval Madness. So it just, it's super easy. my biggest hang up i'm a pin hoarder because i hate selling so it was just a good deal um just being able to ship it out um let him deal with all that stuff and if you want a low hassle way of doing it it's a good way of trading up for a game so again zach and nicole manny flipping out pinball all right john awesome what do we got on store for them tonight so let's talk about there has been two releases since we last spoke uh i guess the last episode you and i have done together was Expo, wasn't it? Back in August? Because we did a Winchester and we did Beetlejuice. It's been a minute. And since then, we had Walking Dead Revealed by John Borg, the remake. And we've had, obviously, Partially. We still don't know everything about that. So we're going to talk about that, but we still don't know all of the details. Yes. There's a lot of mystery surrounding it granted i haven't went to the website and downloaded the pdf fact sheet and went through that because put it on a video so i don't know you know i'm saying um so let's talk about walking dead first that came out first that came out uh three weeks ago um first impressions i did a first impressions video here on the channel i have warmed up to it i will say that it i'm not a fan of the art but there was there was a clip that carrie hardy had put on his Facebook where they took out the blues and the greens and it was solely just reds and oranges and then that black and gray. And I felt like that looked really, really good. Okay. That's the art. What do you get it out of the way? We've all heard it. Okay. I I'm going to jump in on this though too. Okay. Um, the R was polarizing. However, Josh, do you remember the games that I sent you right when it was released? Okay. I sent you Halloween. I sent you, uh, the evil dead. Yep. I sent you what I can't remember what the other one was. And I looked at him like it was Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Chainsaw Massacre. And I said, yeah, these are vibrant color palettes. Yes. And Beetlejuice, too. I sent Beetlejuice, too. And I said, these are these are not subtle color palettes. And we were fine with with that art. I will also remind people that who has the ultimate responsibility to approve the art package? The licensor. And who did this art package? The licensor. Okay. So if there's anything that you don't prefer about it, that's okay. I'm not saying you have to like everything, but you have to realize that Stern is playing in a world where they're working with a licensor. And this is the direction the licensor wanted to go. And so I have looked at the art package, and I think it's fine. I like it. I think there could be different things, but there's a reason why we need to understand that there are limitations on what they can present because this is what the licensor wants. And so I'm just going to – I will say from the art, I'll just appreciate that Stern may have had some direction from the people who own the license. And so just leave it at that because everybody said, why don't we do a black and white? It's like, okay, but you want to stand out too. But the thing with me though is I actually do enjoy some of the art. I feel like it's that kind of photorealistic. It's not like Frenchy photorealistic, but it's still going down that avenue. And all those games you mentioned, so like Beetlejuice and Evil Dead, I feel like their color palettes match the tone or the actual colors from the movies. So I just don't feel like The Walking Dead matches the tone or the vibes of the TV series because obviously they've went the TV route, right? But honestly, the art looks really good in terms of actual drawing and artistic design. the color palette just isn't for me and i do find it funny like someone did point out like the same zombie is drawn on like the left part of the apron the right part of the apron and like smacked out between the flippers yeah yeah i don't get why someone did that i don't know i don't know why it wasn't caught in quality control yada yada okay i don't know do you remember do you remember wonka yeah that's something like wonka dialed in okay there was yeah but again who made that decision it's a licensor it was the licensor and so yeah okay you can look at that and say wow okay there's a reason why with metallica metallica was such a successful game especially the dirty donnie art package because they basically said do whatever you want and by the way the new one with it's joseph who was it joseph reese did i get that All right. Sure. Yeah. OK. All right. Well, we'll correct that. But, you know, the new art package, they basically had the freedom to do what they wanted. And so when you have a licensor that allows that, great. And if you look at it, even historically, The Walking Dead, there were limitations on The Walking Dead where it was almost like a zombie. It was like a zombie game that had The Walking Dead logo on it. Remember that? yeah and so the original art was was rough yeah the original and so i again i'm going to allow for the understanding that the licensor may have a direction for their license and i'm just gonna let let it go i agree and that's why i'm like the the sound like the the art itself is subjective whether you like it or not you know what i'm saying it did make me chuckle we had a couple of complaints on, on the comments. And one of them was like, there's not enough blood. And I was like, I hope this is sarcastic. Cause I can't read your tone. You know what I'm saying? Cause I'm like, you've got Michonne chopping a zombie's head off. You got, uh, Daryl shooting a crossbow through a zombie's head. And like the, the back glass is literally a bloody X across it. So I'm like, you've got to be joking me, but like, I don't know. Like it's weird to me. We've got a remake game. Granted, I feel like the game wasn't in high demand. This is definitely a game that is geared more towards competition play. And it is, is a, is a harder game to play, right? Like is, is not a family friendly, uh, is not like a novice player friendly game. And so I want to know about more about the gameplay, what they've done to, to make it a little more accessible. And, uh, I just, I feel like we're blowing past all that for the artwork. Wouldn't you say? Yeah. I, I, the, okay. Do you also remember, anytime an art package comes out, it's amazing how strong people feel about it. And I think it's totally unfair. We know what the games are. The Spider-Man versus the Ultimate Spider-Man. Do you remember that thing where people are like, why is there a big talking bubble on the backless? I'm like, because it's a comic book edition. Like, so what? And how often do you – okay, I get that art. That's what we see first. Right. That's the hook on the game. But how often do you actually look at the side of the game? The only game that I see the side of is Metallica because I walk down my stairs. That's the that's my end game. OK, do you want to ask me how many times I've looked at the side of Beatles? Like how many times? None. No. I mean, you slide it in. Yeah, it's the it's the back glass. That's really what you see or the translate or whatever you want to call it. So it's – okay. Art, it's one of those things where – you know your favorite book, Josh, and then you hear they're going to make a movie of it? How many times do you love the movie version of the book? It depends on the book. Okay, but usually you're disappointed because – Scott Pilgrim vs. The World was ripped off. It should have had more to the series than just the one movie. It's totally true. I've never seen it. Okay, but because in your mind, you have already told the story. And so you've imagined this is what the character is supposed to look like. This is the way it's supposed to go. This is going to be the tone of that. And so when you read a book, your imagination is part of it. So even if you watch a show, you can say, oh, I wish they had done this. I wish they had done that. So having an adaptation of it, I think it's pretty hard to get something where you're like, oh, that is exactly what I was thinking. There are some times when that does happen, when the secret sauce is in there, like when you get something like Halloween. Halloween sold 1,250 off the art package alone. And by the way, go look at that art package. It's super vibrant. so okay so sometimes they they hit that venn diagram of your expectations versus the product but a lot of times it's it's just what people think and with with the walking dead you have the comic books which are black and white you have the you know you have the series which you know it kind of eventually petered out after you know it started off strong was strong for a while and kind of petered out. So people have their own version of what should be included. So I'm just going to let it lie. There are things that are packages where I wish it were different, but I appreciate that, hey, that's what they want. So I'm so over the art thing. I feel like it's just the weirdest catch-all for this game. And it's unfair. It is. And I agree with you. I think it's mean, too. I think so, too. And here's the other thing, too, is I agree with you. Like once you slide into a lineup nine times out of 10, you really don't miss like notice the side art. Like you can kind of see jaws behind me, but you can't really get a good idea of it. It's just it's the goofiest thing because I feel like there's there's two distinctive type of pinball players, right? There's the person that plays pinball for pinball. They want to know the rules. They want to know the technique. They want to know how to blow up the score. They want to know everything about her. right and then there is the other person is and these kind of intermingle it's not it's not exclusive from each other but the other one is a moments person right it's the fine dining it's the art has to match the filling of the game which has to match the sound of the game which has to like it has to have this perfect just from from appetizer to dessert everything has to be on point everything's fantastic right and a lot of these people are people that are looking for specific themes tailored to their tastes that feel like it does justice to that theme i think the pinball player doesn't really care about like they enjoy the theme like there's some of them just won't their specific themes they just won't have in their house but i think the moments person is looking for more of very specific themes to come into their collection because that's all they're looking for they might not necessarily care about score they might not care about how the game plays and the geometry and how it feels they just want a good immersive game that does justice to the theme i i think overall that's kind of what everyone's looking for but i think you're either one camp or the other and there's a little meshing in the middle but i think that's where the walking dead comes in right like the walking dead isn't revered as a casuals game and so it gets a lot of slack for the fact that like everything else has to be on point and I just don't feel like Walking Dead has a major rabid fan base in the fact that Kiss has a rabid fan base. They will buy almost anything. They've got coffins for sale, right? They've obviously got a fan base that's going to buy anything. I feel like people love Walking Dead. They felt like it was a cultural touchstone, but they just don't tie into that theme into their life like they would maybe Kiss or something like that. I just... I don't think it's fair. I don't think it's fair to Borg that he's gotten a lot of heat for this game when it's, I think a lot of people just looked at the art and passed on it. And granted, I agree. I'm not a fan of the greens and the blues in it, but it doesn't affect the rest of the game for me. But I enjoy playing the game because I love playing pinball to explore and dive deep into pinball and the rule set and stuff like that. I'm looking forward to the rule set and seeing how it evolves because what they did with Metallica was great. Like they took a rule set and as we know, it was a Lyman rule set. Okay. What makes Walking Dead great? It's a hard layout and it also has a Lyman rule set. And so it rewards the elite players. So the people who are really good and they want to sharpen their skills and a complete rule set and an elevated rule set really will help that out. I'm really looking forward to what the rule set has because they really haven't explained much about what the extra features are in this. So I'm looking forward to seeing what, who they actually have augment the rule set, what the actual result is. And then I want to talk to the elite players, not, not the Scott and Josh is out there. We're talking like the Tom grass. We're talking to Travis Murray. We're talking to Carl DeAngelos of the world. Yeah. And we want to see – and Joel. And Joel. By the way, I'm wearing my Triple Drain t-shirt today. So shout out, guys. So I want to see what they think of it because when you have an elite rule set already, I want to see how it is appreciated, especially by the elite players. Now, we know that Stern doesn't have to have a Godzilla every release. They just need to make a certain amount, and they're going to take risks on certain games. This could be one of those games where they thought, hey, we have a tournament game that is well-respected. Let's see what we can do because, as we know, there are different consumers out there. And so having a game that is even geared more toward the competitive scene, I don't think that's a bad thing. No, I agree. and um the other thing i find interesting about this they only did 500 limited editions as far as i'm aware stern hasn't even sold out from them to their distributors so obviously there still allotment there um so if you want one of these le they floating around uh i don and they might be floating around for a minute or two um i i still think walking dead is a great game i would love to get some time in on this i'm i'm excited to play it i don't have interest in owning it um or moving something out you know i'm saying like in the right circumstance i would own it but i This isn't a day one new in box purchase for me. You know what I'm saying? I'm actually going to shock you. I'm actually kind of interested in it. Of course you are. I'm interested because as something that would help level up my pinball skills, having a game like this would be great in my lineup. And when I'm doing my expansion, I don't have room for it right now, but I am looking at expanding my game room. and I wouldn't mind sliding this thing in because I think you... I don't disagree with you. It would be a really good game to elevate my skills and you need a... What are those knife sharpeners in your drawer? You need to be able to get better at pinball and this is an excellent game to do that. I think so too. All right, you might have convinced me. I don't know if I'm still buying new in box but I might get one later. Okay, let's find out. Let's find out when they announce the extra code stuff, because we still don't know. That's a black box. Yeah. All right. Let's move on to the other reveal. You and I were ground. We got in on this before a lot of people got to see it. I feel very honored that we were trusted by Spooky Pinball to come in and work with them on doing day of release on this and then sending us footage that we could use in our podcast. if you watched on our YouTube you have to watch and check out the stuff we were talking about as we were talking about it I gotta say Beagle Juice is pretty fantastic I am still concerned with I've been playing pinball long enough to understand usually how a game is going to play I'm intrigued I don't know how this spooky is going to play most spookies usually play longer and I feel like they're a little easier to the pinball player because they want for you to explore the game right. With everything being pretty much two-thirds or forward towards the flippers, I feel like this is going to be a faster game outside of the couch, the waiting room area. So I'm really intrigued to see how this plays. What do you think, Scott? You know, it looks great. Spooky definitely capitalizes on theme integration. and spooky they know who they are they know who their audience is they know who their fan base is and i'm excited for this there there are going to be people who are like why did they only do 999 are you and i will argue that remember when you're selling a supply josh if i have a thousand that I'm trying to sell, how many do I want demand for? $9.99. Thanks, Josh Sharp. Nope. You want a thousand and one. Oh, never mind. I see. Okay. You see what I was saying, though. Yeah, I get what you're saying. You basically want one person out there who cannot get the product. Yeah. Because that is exactly where you want to be. So for all the people out there, they could have sold 10,000 Beatles. No, they couldn't. They know who they are. They shot a little high on Halloween and Ultraman and all those things. And I think it hurt long term. So having like a limited run, striking while the iron's hot, and they definitely hit it with Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They hit it with Evil Dead and Beetlejuice. they know what the audience is and what the market will demand for their game so i feel like there's a little i feel like there's a little goldfish memory boss here right like you talk about halloween so they had a halloween and ultraman together right so it was 1750 total yep and there was issues there there was a lot of quality issues and bug had stated that in our beetlejuice episode yeah and so i feel like they did talk about like protecting the market on the secondary value market and whatnot which i guess you can kind of argue like rick and morty has retained its value for the most part it's it's questionable like it's it's still around 10 grand so it is what it is tna has tna yeah it's still tna what it was yep and then evil dead evil dead has skyrocketed and that's been with the last year but here's the thing so since halloween they've cut back numbers i feel like quality's gotten back under control um there are still issues here and there but point me to the company that doesn't have any issues this is the one thing that bothers me everyone harps on like everyone harps on the like quality issue achilles heel and i get it like if it's consistently issue after issue after issue there's a problem but like when it's just something simple that it's unrelated and it's maybe a one-off thing it's only happened to a handful of people it just it bugs me because like spooky has better control over it because it knows the people that work on their factory line and they can work with them and say hey this is how it needs to be and it's similar in stern situation but stern situation is there's a lot of people coming in out on that factory line so it's it's a new learning curve right and we've learned in pinball if anything's even off like a 16th of an inch it can affect the game itself and so any back to the point so the quality controls controls getting better and under control and what's upsetting me is we're seeing that sorry i apologize what what upsets me is we're seeing that people are complaining about the limited number of runs with beetlejuice and they're like they should have known to make more than 999 because it would have been a guaranteed sellout well they didn't sell out on texas chainsaw massacre they didn't sell out on looney tunes they didn't sell out on scooby-doo you can still get all those games through spooky on their website today as it sits yeah so how did they know that evil like they didn't know evil dead was going to sell out and it didn't sell out till texas pinball festival that was three months after reveal yeah texas chain chainsaw pinball festival absolutely yeah yeah and so and that so like the fact that everyone's like well they should have known better and and buck said it in our episode like yeah they want to protect the secondary market but i'd rather be the quality control i don't want to have issues with my game right like so here's i shared this comment with you this past week we've we've gotten a ridiculous amount of comments on on spooky and how they handled beetlejuice you know i think you guys handle beetlejuice just fine you're a small company i don't know what you could have done different outside of maybe tell your distributor not to say you can buy it now when they hadn't even done a teaser trailer you know i'm saying i think that's the only thing out of that like get You work with your distributors and not like it's spring, spring, a leak or whatever. Okay. But it's, it's been about as good of a release as you could expect for spooky. Like spooky is ecstatic with this. Yeah. Oh yeah. And I don't blame them. And it looks for them. It's guaranteed to work for the next year and it keeps their people fed. And like they can now focus on the next game. Like it's still, they can still focus on Beetlejuice, stress theory and focus on the next game. Not worrying about the next year. It's amazing. It's brilliant. in my opinion. Let me read this comment to you. This is what I sent you. Loser Kid Pinball. The number of games made should not affect their quality control. It should be a set standard that they meet regardless of scale. Limiting Beetlejuice to such a low number to me reads like an excuse not to be overwhelmed with orders for machines. This is where they suffer from being a small company. I do understand that. I love what they're doing, but I will most likely not never own any of those games with those limited numbers. Well, guess what? You can still buy Scooby-Doo. You can still buy Texas Chainsaw Master. You could still buy Looney Tunes. These are all limited number games. You could own one today, my good sir or ma'am. Why aren't you? You know what I'm saying? Like I don't get this argument and I think it's very ridiculous that you say the number of games should not affect your quality control. they make games once a year they make the same game for a full year whether they make 999 or 10 000 it shouldn't affect their quality control excuse me it absolutely does uh anybody knows scalability is the hardest thing in manufacturing and as we know back in the williams days like they still needed to keep the line moving they did they didn't keep yeah there were some outliers you know twilight zone adam's family but for the most part they wanted to stay relevant and so they kept announcing new things so they could so i i would actually argue that guns and roses may have hurt jjp a little bit yeah because they produced that for so long they there was nothing new coming out for a while and i think they kind of fell out of like a oh that like what else are they doing oh it's that game they already have so having this model where they just have a new game every year is actually really good for a small company no i agree so i think i think spooky's killing it outside of like some people didn't get a beetlejuice i'm sorry that stinks for you guys like you knew this was coming like this we right we talked about beetlejuice three months ago i want people to understand that the thumbnail is beetlejuice versus star wars this is before star was announced and beetlejuice was announced did you know zach many takes interested lists yeah for titles just in case you're like hey i may have an you know what i have a like hello kitty island adventure i may be interested in that theme if it ever comes out so why don't you put your name on a list this is how good he this is customer service at its best let me tell you this when ryan white still worked for cgc and he announced that they were coming out with medieval madness yeah in 2023 and they said it'd be at the end of the year he announced at the beginning of 2023 and then finally it rolls around to this year and medieval madness starts getting announced this year zach hit me up i forgot i was on the list and he said hey josh i just want to follow up make sure i'm not glossing over you do you still want medieval madness now that they've announced it excuse me i think i was like fourth on the list because i was like one of the first if you knew Beetlejuice was coming six months ago, you should have got on the list. And that's the thing too. Again, I got the call. I was sitting in the hot tub. I got the call. Zach's like, hey, do you want one? And I said, yeah, because I'm probably going to put it in my place in St. George. And then I texted back, hey, my buddy also wants one. Can you get one? And he's like, let me see i may be out and we were like one of the last ones like okay i got you too so i got one my buddy got one for each location we paid for them but absolutely so it's i'd be upset if you didn't pay for them where's my deal i want through medieval madness zach hook me up you got a fun house behind you okay um be talking about that was not free i paid for that okay all right don't you be misleading our people listening to here that's the last thing i need on my comments yeah that was paid for okay okay all right all right oh anyhow okay i want to get to our next segment i think this has been really great discussion i think to wrap it up i think both walking dead beetlejuice both you and i agree have been shortchanged in very weird ways but i think they've uh walking dead needs to be given a chance and i think beetlejuice needs the heat taken off of like guys it looks like a great game no one's played it yet well let's let's let the room breathe for a second i'm assuming the first time you'll be able to play these at a public convention is going to be probably tpf get out there and play them oh oh that's the other thing so shh can i let you guys everyone listening to loser kid i'm gonna let you in on a secret you're ready for this go ahead they're all sold out except for did you know spooky makes extra games for shows so if you really really want a beetlejuice like this is i've got to have a beetlejuice go to texas pinball festival figure out where spooky is going to be they usually have extra games there that are not sold to the general public these are show games i know it's kind of weird i know that we say there's 999 but they are actually extra games and i could be i could be corrected but that is how i understand because obviously they're all bought and sold you know so why would they because they don't want to take them home well not only that yeah you volunteer hey i know your game's coming in a week but we have texas pinball festival do you mind if we take it and people jam on it for like a full weekend and then we ship it to you yeah speak you don't do that so yeah that's not it so yeah get your tickets to texas pinball festival i don't know if they'll be at pinball at the beach i don't know where they'll be at but if you want a beetle juice you might want to get your ticket to one of those drive your car down there and show up first thing thursday morning whenever they open maybe you try to get them before they open say hey i want to go check this out and i want to put my name on if this is what i want you know i'm saying so hey you would know so if that is the case you can always message bug and see what's going on yep and maybe i'm yeah yeah so uh and i'm gonna get a message from spooky i'm gonna have to redact all that so now we'll see all righ ty uh let's move on to it's been a fantastic year 2025 i know it's not done we're at the end of november we still have a month to go as i foresee it i could be wrong this would not be the first time that i'm wrong i'll eat crow as i foresee it all the games have been released for 2025 i don't foresee anything in december best case scenario is a teaser trailer worst case or nothing and now it's not released there's no way any games are going to get released no so scott and i have put our lists down and we are going to talk about the top five pinball machines of 2025 you ready for this okay josh do you want to recap for the listening audience so they know exactly and so they can start making their list for themselves yes so anything produced in 2025 sorry yes anything produced and shipped in 2025 so honorable mention will be beetlejuice because it was shown this year it will not ship till 2026 so we has walking dead shipped yet walking dead has shipped and okay it's been at conventions so walking dead is actually out the door so we have we're going chronological order i do apologize we missed anything but we went through this evil dead dungeons and dragons portal merlin's arcade dune king kong medieval madness merlin edition harry potter predator jaws 50th star wars fall of the empire and winchester so that hits everything that has been released and shipped this year or is shipping that i think we're kind of going by the twippy standards like the one machine has left their door to go out to you you didn't say dune right i was i was i did say dune in between king kong and portal i want to say all right oh merlin's arcade and king kong so yeah that is the list uh that is did you count how many games there's got to be like 12 no one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve hey look at that i know so enthralling here we're so professional so i count them on all my 12 fingers we've distilled it down to five games for the whole year we're gonna go from five to one uh starting with number five do you want to go first you want me to give my number five you know i want you to get your number five because i forgot what my number five was my number five is spooky's evil dead i think this game was one of those games i was not expecting to enjoy it was just another theme that i think was a cult classic a cult following so i was like well it is what it is and it came out and i was like dang this is this is really good this looks really really good um i gotta play one of these and we finally got our hands on one expo and i enjoyed it um it it played really well. I thought the geometry was good I give it probably about an 8 out of 10 There was a couple spots I felt where I don get the whole flipper inside the sling thing So that does dock it a little bit for me But other than that man this game is awesome This game is awesome for the fact of the theme immersion. They took a theme and they drew you into that world. They didn't pull Evil Dead into Spooky's world. Spooky got pulled into Evil Dead's world just like they did with the Book of the Dead, right? like they just oh this game is so cool and the fact that it's retained its value and actually went up in value over the year is insane to me but it's so cool to see that spooky is just getting better and better with releases and they are taking what they know and refining it and distilling it down and putting it into their games as they move forward so for number five i present to you evil dead what do you got scott i'm mixing it up a little bit Oh, and I am going to say this understanding that there were there going to be people who disagree with me. OK, well, this isn't a gospel. This isn't a gospel list. It's all subjective. It's me and you. OK. I'm going to put King Kong at five. Oh, wow. Why so low? Okay, so this is the problem of other people really stepping up this year. And I love Elwynn Games. I am a huge fan of Keith Elwin. I would say hands down most bankable designer out there right now. Okay, and this is a great game. And I love it. I want it. I will buy it when I have the space. I will also say that there are so many excellent games that he has that I'm okay waiting a little bit on this one. And so if I'm going to say, hey, I love this game, and I do, there are other Elwynn games that I think are so good and I can still scratch that itch. And I have – this is no criticism on Elwynn at all or King Kong because I truly love this game. It is actually a – it is a recognition that other manufacturers have really stepped up this year. And so I – this is suffering under the weight of consistent expectations. And so I love King Kong. I'm still going to put it at number five because there's a few games on here that give me a different vibe and I'm interested in and I think that it's the flavor that they brought this year. Okay. No, that's reasonable to me. I think that's very reasonable. Let's have you go next. You do your number four. okay number four portal i'm putting portal as number four this is the first p3 game that legit could have felt like a standalone game like and i i like the p3 options of saying hey buying this and now you can slide in different things this is the first one when i played where it felt like it didn't feel like a cartridge in the back of the machine, which, by the way, is not a knock on it. It is a different vibe. Like, I love what they're trying to do is saying, hey, we have a lot of options back there. And if you look at it, it is a huge bang for the buck because you can get Portal and you can buy the extended kit, and it was really close to a full pinball machine. You can also get Princess Bride in there for cheap. You can get Weird Al in there for cheap. You can get, oh, I'm sorry, the Scott Denise one in there for final resistance. Yes, that one. And so there are so many options that you can get. This is the perfect gateway into P3. And even if you're like, you know, I don't have the money to buy all of the game modules, you will be satisfied with Portal. And my own son said, Dad, this is a great game. We should buy it. And if you can impress a 15-year-old, that's a high mark. So, again, this is me saying that P3 has really stepped up, and this is the most impressive release they've had so far. Yep, I agree. All right, my number four, I'm really wrestling with myself. but I really think this is number four for me. Harry Potter. This game is amazing. When we played at Expo, it had that one more feel to it. It was fast. It was good. Like it was a really fun game. For me, why it reaches into number four, compared to everything else, I just, I'm going base only off if I slide it in my connection or into my collection. And this is where it is at the list. I just, there are other games that have come out this year. I think you've alluded to it, Scott. Like there's just been a, such an insane year for pinball. And I feel like Harry Potter any other year would have just dominated, but I just, I, I don't know, man. Like I, I, I want this game. Like, I don't, I don't want to do there. So like, from here up i want all these games and so i'm just like i just i don't know but with harry potter i just it was a really great game i think the artwork was fine i i don't get the whole ai stuff like i get like the derpy dragon was back i will i will not give that a pass like that was that was rough but other than that like this game has really stood up against the other jersey jack games and i felt like elton john was the turn of it and now we're starting to see like this like everyone's it's like the secret sauce right like people are starting to figure out this dynamic layout the fact that like you want mechs that change the direction of the ball and stuff like that and harry potter gives you all that and even like the quidditch fields are really really cool just a simple upper play field that's slightly you know it's repeatable whatnot i don't know like it's a great game um i need more time on it to tell you what where it falls short because i've only played a handful of games but for me number four is harry potter and since i made you go back to back i will go back to back my next one your number four is my number three portal okay portal i was more than impressed with at pinball expo the insanely cool ball launching next the different portals to different areas the cause the the companion cube how it's portaling from portal from side to side just the immersion to this game and it fits so perfectly on a p3 like the technology it just it's like this game was meant to be on p3 i don't think like any other company could have done justice to it like it like p3 and multimorphic did and it's one of those games that i i need to sell something to to get it um and so like i'm debating because my collection's pretty packed at the moment but i'm just and i again it's a p3 like it's not a space thing anyhow uh yeah okay but it's still a money thing i mean come on it's a money thing this isn't if these these things cost money you know so so it's you you still have have to budget for it and so i totally understand it it is less of a space issue but yes you still know it's my p3 p3 for the fact portal the rumor of portal was coming and i wanted to be prepared for it and so i wanted to get more time on a p3 for our listener because there's a lot of there's actually a lot of questions about like is about p3s and so i wanted to learn more about it because they're not even one in the state of utah outside of what i have that i know of and so but overall portal like it's coming into my house at one point in time or other it's it's a guaranteed set so okay what's your what's your number three my number three is winchester um winchester definitely came out of the blue we heard that that there was something new coming from a high level player and we didn't know anything about it and then we're like oh it's winchester and i'm like okay in winchester and i was like okay what is that let me tell the theme like okay i i remember hearing something about a spooky haunted house um the lady felt like she was had to keep building or confuse the ghost or i still don't totally understand the story but like okay this is interesting and then when i went to play it it if carl d'angelo is not an elite pinball designer within the next five years i will quit loser kid and definitely retire from pinball forever because because carl understands pinball way more than 99.9% of people out there. He understands what makes games flow, what makes them fun, and he also understands rule sets. If you want to learn how to play a game, the first thing you do is Google tutorial, and if you find a Carl D'Angelo tutorial, that's a pretty solid one to look at. The game is awesome, and I only ranked it as number three because I'm super disappointed that there's not going to be a, so far, there's not going to be a standard version that I can buy because the limited edition sold out. So just the way that Winchester played and everything was so good about that. I also 100% believe that this surprised Barrels of Fun because Barrels of Fun, they had no idea they had a walk-off Grand Slam in their hands because they didn't know. This is his first game. And they were like, hey, they have three different elements. You have a theme. You have a limited quantity. You have a new designer. Hopefully some of those will resonate with buyers. And when people went and played it, they're like, dang, this is a really good game. So I didn't even play it until it was already sold out. That's how quickly it went. So I love everything about this, and I really probably will just pay a premium for a few hundred thousand more in sticker price, and I will probably have this in my house. Yeah, yeah. So my number two – that was your number two, right? No, that was number three. Okay, so that's your number three. So have you done number three yet? You did number three. Yeah, but I did Portal. Okay, so let's alternate now. Okay, so you give me your number two. No, you do number two. I think Winchester. You want me to do it? Okay. Okay, yeah, I'll do my number two. I'll do my number two. Okay. Number two for me is King Kong. I have a pro behind me. This game, the ball paths on it are insane. Like, the code is still maturing, right? Like, it's been out since May. The thing about L1 that I appreciate is I feel like his code out of the gate, nine times out of ten, is pretty well fleshed out for a novice player. So it gives me a good idea of the direction it's heading. And I can usually get to the wizard mode at L1's early, early code. Not wizard mode. I can get to the end-ish. but with this game man i i know i went with a pro because i felt like the king kong mech really didn't do much like it was like it's cool don't get me wrong it's very very cool it doesn't interact with the ball in a way that i felt was meaningful that's just me that's my personal preference and the subway was cool but it's just a ball lock and so like ball locks can be cool i just didn't feel like it justified upgrading from a proto premium right You see all those drop targets with the cool Gary Stern golden idol hidden behind them with that little upper flipper plus the river that comes down. This is a game I turn on my collection and I just play just day after day. When I'm in a pinball mood, I come to King Kong first. It is so unique. I don't think I have played a game, any other pinball game, like King Kong. and that's what kind of frustrates me is people dog on it i just don't get where the hate's coming from i get if you feel like mechanically it's not as sound as other keith ellen games um but i feel like a lot of the fixes like the the vertical up kicker it's an angle bracket you can buy for like two bucks off of amazon i just the pro to me i feel like it's very very solid and i haven't had any issues with it and man it is just such a good game i am not sorry i traded my foo fighters pro to get my king kong pro if you haven't played one what are you doing get out there and try it so what's your number two scott so my number two is dune like it barrels of fun have that have figured out how to take the secret sauce that eric did with Guns N' Roses and a sprinkle it into Dune to have a complete thematic immersion. Because this game, when you, from the plunge, it has a continuous soundtrack going on it. It has the light show. It has all the molds in it that make the past. And I thought the past were awesome. I thought they were fun. They were innovative, and I loved the – okay, I still haven't seen Dune. But when you have the sandworm that you're trying to – it has that little mechanism that's banging up and down to summon the sandworm. Okay, that feels awesome because your hands are on the machine, and you're feeling the vibration of the speaker, and you're feeling the pounding. you're seeing the total projection in the back it's the the lcd in the back panel and it is just so good that okay what makes a great pinball machine they don't all have to be like godzilla level like shooters they don't they have to be fun and this is this was fun challenging it had easy shots it had hard shots it had that awesome sandworm that that telescopes up and eats the ball and it's just it is so good and dune i really hope they continue making this because it is such a great game i definitely want it i just don't have space right now but i i love the game and there's okay there's a reason why joel's wife played it and said this is a cool game yeah like she nailed it she's like you want to be in this environment then you have the the pain box thing i mean come on like it's so good that i i really want this game yeah it really is it's uh it's something special and i think i remember being at expo when they revealed labyrinth and i was like this is really cool i'm not a huge labyrinth fan but like what they're doing is very intriguing and then when dune came out i was like this isn't just like a fluke thing this is this is legit and then when you and i played it at expo i was like dang this this is awesome like this is this is like validity to me that they are more than a legit company right like they are they are taking it to the next level and yeah so that your number two right that my number two All right So we down to our number ones Do you want to do honorable mentions before we reveal our number ones Yes. So my honorable mention is going to be Dune. It did not make my top five list. I know some people are booing. I agree with you, Scott. Like everything you said, I agree. I just, I felt like there were five other games before it that I would prefer to have in my collection. I don't know. Honestly, it's a fight for fifth between Evil Dead and Dune. I really, really enjoyed Dune. It was a really good game. But I've already made my bed, so I'm going to lay in it. So Dune remains on my honorable mentions. How about you? Well, okay, Evil Dead was my honorable mention. And again, it suffers a little bit just because of the niche attitude. Like you can't – for me to have like a top five appeal, it really has to be like a – this can go anywhere to anybody at any time. And it's – there is definitely a focused group for Evil Dead. Now, again, that group loved it and bought it, and it is perfect that way, but it's – there were five that I would rank higher on my own ability list. So that's really – when I'm thinking of a top five, I'm thinking of top five games I would have in my collection. Yeah, same here. So that is nothing about Spooky and that because it is – it's a great game. we really had an embarrassment of riches this year yep we really did like 2025 was a rough year for like for competition it was all solid right like it's just it was rough in the fact that like for your wallet yeah it took a pounding yeah or you just had my house my space my space i don't have space yeah i could have easily doubled my collection this year easily and i don't feel that about every i don't know if i felt about that for pinball for a while now you know i'm saying that last year there was jaws and there was um which i obviously got and then there was um metallica which you got um evil dead was awesome but that didn't reveal to the end of the year i'm trying to think labyrinth wasn't my cup of tea so okay again labyrinth suffers from And that was from 2023. Yeah. So I'm just like, I'm just trying to think like last year, like I wasn't a fan of X-Men. Like, I don't know. We can get to that later. Okay. We're doing our top points. Okay. All right. Scott, give us the honors of your number one. Let's see. Let's hear this. Number one. No question. Hands down. Harry Potter. I knew it. It is so good, Josh. I, I, I, the way that Eric designed this game, It is so great. It flows so good. It has possibly one of the best upper playfields ever invented because your Quidditch battle, you not only have an upper loop that you can repeat, but it also has a wire form that you can shoot and has a 180. it is super challenging it's but but it is it is achievable which is you know there's a lot of games where it's like you know it's kind of like that side that stupid flipper in led zeppelin like that the only person that can shoot that side shot is joe is joel but um it has so much in there it is so packed the staircase mechanism the diverter that causes so many different options there. It is a baptism into the Harry Potter world. And given there are eight films and seven books, the way that you are just liquid poured into this game is unbelievable. The art, by the way, is awesome. I don't care what anyone says. Okay. You can talk about you know distracted distractible things such as oh they may use ar okay whatever it looks so good in person you would never know any of this stuff and the collector's edition looks so good with the you know the okay marilina i i'm i know i'm not saying that right yeah and it's the it's basically the art that feels like you're reading the book and then you have the wizard the wizard edition that has like all of the movie assets and it looks so great on the on the side and then you also have the option of getting an arcade edition yes okay i get it it's ten thousand dollars or nine but this is something that will make my i guarantee if harry potter were downstairs in my collection that is 100 the first game anybody will go to hands down because it is so good and so eric 100 i bow to you you totally nailed this one and yeah 100 best game of the year it is a pretty wonderful that's why i had a really hard time with this list because it's yeah yeah okay my number one what do we have we have 12 games uh okay you're slow rolling it i already know what it is i already know i want to see you just guess let's see you guess it you're gonna say winchester it's winchester and i'm gonna tell you why boom yep i'm going to tell you why okay winchester it's not the fact that i get shocked it's not like this is a drop i like spooky things i'm not a fan of the winchester house it's not like it's not like i have winchester merchandise what yeah here's the thing you have that tattoo i do have that tattoo of the ghost on my butt yes that's true here's the thing about winchester when i played it at expo it plays so smooth this is one thing we talked about with carl d'angelo on the podcast when we had him on it's that years of tweaking games fixing games just knowing where the geometry is at i feel like between the pepper's ghost between that crazy cool spinning will the turntable with the different paths and how quickly it reacts to where it needs to be the ramps themselves it's a hard playing game like it's it's a tougher playing game i didn't feel like it was like really hard the fact that like you can you can like go to different rooms and keys and like you can explore the game or you like you can kind of shortcut to certain areas but you're still exploring the game like if you just want to enjoy the game for what it is you can this game hits on so many different levels i feel bad for the other companies because i feel like carl d'angelo said this is what pinball should be this is you know this is pinball and i totally agree and i i know scott you consider yourself a lower tier player i would consider myself on the upper side i'm not top 1000 or top 100 i think if i really had the time and the means and whatnot and i really wanted to dedicate my life to competition pinball i feel like i could be in the top 1000 uh another reason like i say this too is like if you have insider connected go look at your high scores and it will compare you to other people on insider connected to their high scores every game i played except for like three i'm in the top one percent so i feel like coming from a person that understands the geometry of pinball and how a game feels winchester just feels so good the sound from jeff dots at dirty pin pool at him dirty pool pinball just hits on so many levels it just it's so good the artwork brad albright tied this all together this game in my opinion is the perfect package for this year and it scores high on my list and the only thing i'm upset about with this game is i asked zach do you have winchester and he said yes i said i i'm going to expo i asked him on tuesday no yeah monday what day whatever revealed i'm going to expo on wednesday it should be set up thursday i'm gonna play it and i'll get back to you i missed out because i had to play the game first which i don't think there's anything wrong with no one no one expected for this to sell out i i agree with you like it's one of those games i'm going to sit and see how it does okay i'm not i'm not to the point where i'm about to sell two games or whatever it is to move one winchester in my collection because let's be realistic it's 11-6 and we don't know what the market's going to do on it right but this game is just so good and it's just it's it's when something it's a perfect storm in my opinion and it just makes me excited even more for barrels of fun moving forward in the future and seeing now that they have carl d'angelo like it's literally the clash of the titans in my opinion between d'angelo and elwynn and the nice part about elwynn is at all of his games will be available and i don't have to stress because a pro is half of almost half of what a winchester is right so moving forward i guess that's just one thing i gotta keep an eye on but for me winner of 2025 winchester without a doubt so yeah if you guys agree let us know if you disagree less in the comments all that stuff okay so i'll recap my top five so Harry Potter, number one. Dune, number two. Winchester, number three. Portal, number four. Kong, number five. By the way, which one of those games would you not want to own? Yeah. All of them. You would want to own all of them. When's the last time we had a year? And by the way, I would put Evil Dead, my honorable mention, just because if you're looking at the aggregate market out there, you would definitely put that in there. And so, okay, so all major companies have made a showing. Okay, I'm not going to throw the Marlin Edition or the Chicago Gaming on that. All the major companies have had a major show this year. And I will even add, I did get, oh, so I got the upgrade kit for Cactus Canyon. So even like Chicago Gaming is making some big strides. And by the way, opening that kit, it looks amazing. I'm going to be installing it this week. But, okay, when is the last time that we have had five or six major companies have a big hit in one year? yeah um i can't remember i really okay it's been at least 30 years come on one week oh sorry yeah okay so josh recap your top five my top five number one winchester number two king kong number three portal number four harry potter and number five evil dead and i feel like the the list itself and five evil aid slash dune i feel like the list is very like i i could be persuaded one way or the other okay we have the same sex but if you noticed we prioritize them differently yeah but all of those games are great games yep so that that gives you options it's not like the year where it's like well there's only one game that you can really put in there so yeah how lucky are we this year i like i said i can't remember we've been doing this podcast coming up on seven years here in january and all the years that we've been doing this i don't remember a year where it's been like holy crap i've got to own all these games from all these companies i've just yeah i want to play them but i just haven't been like i've got to own these games and i I seriously am like, how am I going to get these five games, these four games? My personal, yeah, these five games. Actually, because of my life situation right now, I actually think I would bump Evil Dead down to six and do it up to five because of my family situation. Okay, I would say your ranking is correct. Now, there's a big difference between a ranking list and a personal purchase list. Yeah. There is. so so evil that's still on your top five i would say 2021 was the last year that was uh i mean cactus canyon remake godzilla rush which i don't have much heartburn over not owning but you love that so that's why i'm throwing that in here weird owl which i thought was amazing yeah toy story you can argue on it whether you like it or not i thought it was a great i think it's fun enough I think it's fun enough. And that's the other – Spooky also did Total Nuclear Annihilation brought back for the second round. That was a pretty good year. So 2021, I will give that year. And that's stretching it in my opinion. It's like half by five. It's not the same as this year. Yeah, it's not. It's not. Having Barrels of Fun in there, they had two games in my top five. Yeah. They had two and three. I mean, come on. They're a big player. like they're they're coming to play yeah they and i i don't think they're afraid of um i'm interested to see what they do with quality numbers or quality quantity numbers moving forward right so um that pretty much wraps it up for the episode um we do have a couple notes here at the end that we just want to hit really really quick um we do have a new shirt on silverball swag.com it is similar to did stern still our idea we have the loser kit that's kind of similar to this flag so go check it out I will give some shout outs I don't want this person to be flooded with requests but just so you know I got some banners I got a Metallica banner and I actually bought the old school Metallica banner so if you're watching you can see both of them and my secret Santa also got this awesome ball lock which is from CSI, so I'm holding up a skull. So this is great. Thank you so much. You know who you are. I don't want you getting flooded with a lot of requests, but your generous help is greatly appreciating the visual content of this show. We're starting to rotate some banners behind me, and I think Josh may be considering doing something like that, but it's just a nice way of getting people to see some of the things we're talking about. If, we've been talking about portal we talked about how amazing portal is princess bride i love princess bride i'm enjoying my word out my kids like what i am more i like princess bride more it's a fight it is what it is thousand dollars off that is still that is because i got a p3 it's part of the referral program so if you don't know anyone that owns a p3 but you still want that thousand dollars off email us here at loser kid pinball podcast at gmail.com we will get you in touch with jerry and sarah and we will get that $1,000 off of that new portal game or Princess Bride or Final Resistance, whatever it may be. There are little terms and conditions. We can talk about that if you email us. Do that, or if you're lo Looking for a Funhouse, doesn't matter if it's the standard edition or if it is the LE, we can get you $500 off there as well. Please email us at LoserKidPinballPodcast at gmail.com. Other than that, if you want to get a hold of us, all the socials at LoserKidPinballPodcast at gmail.com, at LoserKidPinball at Facebook, Instagram all that jazz so we appreciate all the Patreon support because it does help buy these little things that make it fun for for you to watch and listen to and so we really appreciate everybody who has signed up and we want to wish everybody a Merry Thanksgiving and a Merry Holidays for whatever your holiday plans are we have a year end wrap up show coming up and we do have a special guest planned so we're excited on that okay give us the last word give you the last word uh play pinball and happy holidays everyone